Acclaimed science fiction author Isaac Asimov is celebrated on this day, Jan. 2 (his actual birthdate is unknown). He comes from Petrovichi, a small town in what was then the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. He’d go on to pen or edit over 500 books. While his birthdate isn’t known, he celebrated it on Jan. 2.
Asimov’s parents moved the family to the U.S. when he was 3 years old. He entered school at a young age after teaching himself to read. He became obsessed with science fiction while working at his parents’ New York City candy shop. He started writing at just 11 years old.
He earned a doctorate in chemistry and spent less than a year in the U.S. Army before an honorable discharge in 1946. By then, he’d built a reputation as a talented sci-fi short story writer, having already published Foundation. That would end up being the first novel in his most famous series, centering on the politics of empires in space. Heady stuff.
After becoming a professor at the Boston University School of Medicine, his writing really started to take off, earning him more than his day job.
He started penning science fiction novels in 1950, and was inspired to draft nonfiction, popular science books after the 1957 orbit of the Soviet satellite Sputnik I. He would go on to draft hundreds of nonfiction books and science fiction novels. Oh, and he also wrote mystery stories, limericks, and played around in many other formats. He died in 1992, around a decade after he’d contracted HIV from a blood transfusion during heart surgery. His contributions to literature and science have been memorialized in many, many ways. His name is on several international book awards, an asteroid, a crater on Mars, a New York elementary school, and more.
For more on Asimov’s prolific career, you can check out these pieces at Biography.com and Forbes.
